Stay on target

Our hearts go out to the nearly 800 employees recently laid off from Activision Blizzard, a company that failed to meet its expectations despite record revenue in our very cool current economic system. But while now there may be fewer Blizzard workers now left to save, they are still worth saving. Or, you know, unionize.

Bungie has always had a complicated relationship with authority. The Marathon games were a highlight of Mac gaming, so much so that in 1999 Steve Jobs himself helped unveiled its spiritual successor Halo to the Apple faithful. But the next year Bungie was bought out by Microsoft and now-exclusive Halo single-handedly made the original Xbox a console worth owning. Ten years later though, Bungie split from Microsoft, and although they were forced to leave Halo behind, the developer’s new ten-year contract with Activision gave them total ownership of their next seismic sci-fi shooter: Destiny.

Now, about ten years after that, Bungie dropped the bomb that they are ending their partnership with Activision and taking Destiny with them. The publisher that only puts out like three games is going to put out one less game. Supporting a huge (if extremely uneven) franchise like Destiny without the support of one of the world’s biggest video game publishers is going to be difficult.

But based on how positive the reaction has been from Bungie employees and Destiny fans alike, freedom from Activision’s dumb package goods demands sounds totally worth it for the game and its live future. And if that’s the case, there’s another company that also deserves to be free from Moneyball’s Bobby Kotick and his craven video game assembly line: Blizzard.

In 2008, not that long before Bungie jumped ship from Microsoft, Activision merged with Vivendi games giving the Call of Duty company rights over new franchises like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. But the biggest piece of the pie was Blizzard, riding high on World of Warcraft’s Earth-shattering success. The new company was renamed Activision Blizzard, reflecting who really mattered.

Fortunately, for years it seemed as if gamers could hardly notice that one of the most despised publishers in the business had merged with one of the most beloved developers in the business. As Activision kept running franchises like Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk into the ground with aggressive and unnecessary annual releases, Blizzard continued releasing games at its own famously relaxed and methodical pace. StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, and new WoW expansions may have had their issues among the super hardcore, but their sheer craft and quality meant the brands themselves weren’t poisoned, not even by bad live-action movies about famous orcs.

Heck, even Blizzard’s weird small experiments turned into new cash cows. Who knew so many people would be down with a reimagined collectible card game like Hearthstone or a streamlined MOBA like Heroes of the Storm. They even managed to make their first new franchise in years, the colorful hero shooter Overwatch, into a crucial fixture of modern gaming culture after picking the bones of their failed MMO Titan. Although now in retrospect that game’s aggressive lootboxes should’ve clued us in to Activision’s creeping negative influence as reported on sites like Kotaku.

Very recently though Blizzard just makes me sad, almost in a Valve way. But whereas Valve’s problems are more complex, Blizzard’s seem to simply trace back to the publicly traded Activision overlords. Longtime Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime has essentially left the company. We’re seeing increasing reports of financial executives having more of a say over creative aspects game development. Former employees are speaking out about workplace harassment.

And it keeps going. Remember the stupid drama over Diablo Immortal? There’s the mystery surrounding the quick hiring and firing of CFO Spencer Neumann who just moved to Netflix. Projects like Heroes of the Storm have abruptly had funding pulled, greatly hurting loyal eSports community. And in general we keep hearing there’s more pressure on Blizzard from Activision to make more with less, to get closer to the annual release model that’s already killed Activision’s other franchises.

Maybe World of Warcraft is so old and not what it used to be that it just can’t protect Blizzard anymore. Maybe the two halves of the companies are just too entwined to keep the bad parts of one from affecting the other. But if it’s at all possible, we’d love for Blizzard to pull a Bungie and escape from Activision while taking all of its toys with them. Gamers can live without Call of Duty Black Ops 4 on Battle.net. Besides, Activision will be fine. This is the same company that spent nearly $6 billion on King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga. They probably won’t even notice the loss.

If that doesn’t work, Blizzard, like all game developers and really all workers, should just form a union.